Embroidery: Rebranded and Reborn

Convent-bound nuns and well-bred ladies have been the most prominent embroiders for thousands of years. Today, tiny cacti, naked ladies and feminist declarations lettered in a cursive scrawl—all borne from colorful strands of thread—are invading my Instagram feed. The dominance of social media is ushering in an Age of the Aesthetic, a tech-driven bubble where a specific shade of pink can snowball into a legitimate trend.

Needle-wielding hipsters with Instagram handles like @thekitchystitcher and @embroiderypanda are leading the rebranding, boosting its cultural cache. Embroidery used to call to mind Martha Washington, or at least the little old lady embellishing doilies at the bus stop. Now, she’s a denim-clad millennial balancing stiches with Raya swipes in the back of an Uber Pool.

In other words, embroidery is magically cool. The clearest distillation of this trend is found via the work of @LockhartEmbroidery, who famously stitched Drake’s iconic prayer hands symbol across the butt of a pair of jeans. The image went viral, and soon enough the rapper himself was photographed in the studio wearing a Lockheart bomber jacket. Who knew rap was all embroidery needed to gain some street cred?

Now, a search for #embroidery yields over 2.7 million Instagram posts, an ecosystem where fiber artists share their latest work to an army of emoji-commenting, Etsy-using consumers. A new wave of interest, rooted in a viral fan base, recasts the medium as powerfully modern. Every user interaction reaffirms its popularity, as hearts and “100” signs are commented in endless rows. 

High-end designers are picking up on this trend, embracing so-called “maximalism” (think the iconic, yellow brocade cape Rihanna wore to the Met Ball) with rich patterns and textures. Gucci’s fall-winter 2016 collection tattoos eyes and cursive phrases with thread on clothing with four-digit price tags. Of course, when “fast fashion” copies the runways at hyper speed, haute couture and the handmade are more accessible than ever. Urban Outfitters sells over 20 versions of the “dad hats,” simply embellished with a peace sign or rose, that seemingly crowned every teenager at Lollapalooza.

Embroidery is at the heart of a modern, textile-based maker’s movement. Newcomers looking for trendy tutorials can thank Jenny Hart, the blunt-banged founder of Sublime Stitching. She created the online source for quirkily original patterns like ‘50s rockabilly babes 15 years ago in an attempt to modernize kitschy designs like “Bless This Home.”

“My generation was missing out by not doing it and I really wanted to see if I could make it popular again and get people to look at it differently,” Hart said.

These early patterns of retro pin-up girls and rocket ships set the decidedly un-grandmotherly tone. Now, she fills her pattern sheets with Dia de los Muertos sugar skulls and succulents. The Sublime Stitching embroidery workshops are equally hip; the latest event celebrated Halloween with a glow-in-the-dark evening with ghost stories, black lights and luminescent thread. Sublime Stitching’s Instagram account boasts over 27,800 followers.

College students like Northwestern senior Sloane Middleton are going beyond buying to DIY’ing themselves—Middleton laughingly recalls spending 14 hours embroidering on a road trip to Mardi Gras, a rare combination of old fashioned stitching and spring break bacchanalia. Millennial women are driving this resurgence, creating both decorative and wearable work.

Emily Berent, a senior at Arizona State University, picked up embroidery last year as an outlet for personal expression after seeing the trend on Instagram.

“I tend to create a lot of feminine and feminist pieces, but that is because I am a feminine feminist,” Berent said. “No matter what art form I am working with, I tend to go that route. I enjoy making empowering art, and using my art to empower others to create as well.”

While earlier generations of women learned from their relatives, Berent taught herself basic stitches with YouTube tutorials and mined inspiration from Instagram hashtags. Some videos, like Stitching Cow’s “How to Embroider,” rack up over a million views. Berent primarily creates pieces that are decorative, not wearable, filling embroidery hoops with everything from flower gardens to a six-inch portrait of Bernie Sanders.

“I needed to embroider him because I embroider to empower, and nothing empowers me like Bernie,” Berent said.

Indeed, this new generation of embroiderers is finding new ways to assert power with needle and thread. The 22-year-old British artist Hannah Hill (@hanecdote) recently went viral with her embroidered rendition of the Arthur’s Fist meme. Arthur’s clenched fist—normally empty— holds a sewing needle, and the stitched text reads: “When you remember that historically, embroidery hasn’t been taken seriously because it’s ‘women’s work.’” Hart was one of the 57,000 people to share the image.

“My interest has always been just to get people to look at embroidery differently and to see something that they at once recognize,” Hart said. “And they can’t deny that they’ve never seen it like this before.”

One thing is clear: the days of creating staid, floral couch cushions are over. Embroidery sprawls, creeping across the clothes of subway commuters and our iPhone screens with stitching of babes and Bernie Sanders. The handmade has made a comeback.